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September 23, 2017

As The Disaster Artist trailer was just released, Kevin
Moyers shares an old interview with Greg Sestero about his book The Disaster Artist: My
Life Inside The Room. They discuss what it's like to tour with Tommy
Wiseau, writing and touring for a book and Greg's upcoming projects.

Click here to listen or right click and choose "Save Link As..." to download.

September 7, 2017

Someone needs to improve this Invisalign design that allows the wearer to drink alcohol while they’re in…

Hold Your Breath opens with a flashback in 1956 where the preacher-turned-serial killer (huh?) is about to be executed. Dietrich Van Klaus (evil German…how original) blathers on with some bullshit exposition from the Bible, gouges out his own eye, kills a guard, then they finally strap him down and throw the switch.

*yawn* Edward DeLacroix’s death was much worse. Just saying.

We move on to the present day where a group of twenty-somethings are getting together for a camping weekend. (and OMG the girls are like soooo annoying. Like HIIIIIII!!) On the way to the campsite they pass a graveyard and Jerry (the blonde annoying girl) freaks the fuck out trying to get everyone to hold their breaths as the car passes because OMG THAT’S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GET POSSESSED. GAAAAWD!

Adrian
(Michael Callan) is a nudie photographer whose exciting lifestyle hides lots
and lots of personal problems. Plagued by nightmares where he brutally murders his
models, he is led to believe that he may be performing them unconsciously
during blackouts when some of his subjects start turning up dead. Seeking help
from a psychiatrist, Adrian express his concerns to Dr. Frank Curtis (Seymour
Cassel) in a starkly appointed office dominated by a naked muscleman statue. In
the meantime, two very unconvincing undercover police officers Fontain (Pamela
Hensley) and Buckhold (David Young) try to make sense of all the bodies piling
up. Adrian has a fling with flirty blonde Mindy (Joanna Pettet). In one incomprehensible
scene, Adrian is seen drowning a model in a swimming pool after she refuses to
let go of the swimming pool net he’s wielding to push her under the water.
Could Adrian’s former stuntman brother and real-life double amputee James Stacy
be involved somehow? Growing ever more disjointed and choppy, the film grinds
to a most unconvincing twist ending.

August 25, 2017

Things are going great guns for transplanted French-Canadian Jim (played by writer-director Alain Patrick). His work-is-play lifestyle as the director of hardcore porno films provides a comfortable lifestyle for himself, his easygoing hippie wife (Barbara Mills) and baby daughter. When he isn’t training his camera on copulating couples, he roars around in his sports car and tools about on his yacht in a California coastal town. Things are great, really great. So great, that things get pretty uneventful. Jim enjoys a fling with a pretty model, but his wife is okay with it. Scumbag distributors play money games with him and his friends, but they usually pony up. His terribly chic friends lay around, smoke some grass and offer latitudes up about the “New Morality.” Jim walks here, walks there, shoots some porn, and then takes his shirt off to show off his suntan. He and his friends sit around and talk some more. By this point, the punters lured into the theater with promises of an expose on the pornographic film business are looking at their watches and wondering if they still have time to take advantage of the lunch special across the street. The sex on display is disappointingly soft-core and far too brief. Talk, talk, talk, Jim takes off his shirt again. Is something going to happen?

August 19, 2017

Growing up in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, I heard a lot about serial killers and mass murderers. John Wayne Gacy and Richard Speck were from Chicago, and they were both executed for their horrendous crimes. We were also affected by another bizarre killer at that time. He wasn't from Chicago, but he often traveled there, and some of his victims were part of the Chicago gay scene. I am speaking of Milwaukee's cannibal killer, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Dahmer was a strange case. When an intended victim escaped and led police to his apartment, what was discovered was a nightmare that Wes Craven couldn't imagine. A refrigerator full of human remains was only the tip of the iceberg. Dahmer had a long and unnerving history. My Friend Dahmer dips into the early part, up until his first killing. How do we know it's accurate? It's written by one of his high school friends.

August 17, 2017

Nebbish Melvin Finkelfarb’s (Doug Stone) life revolves around to tending to his Antique/Junk shop, being berated by his yenta mother (Ultramax) and sneaking off to Times Square to catch the latest skin flicks. Finding a discarded vase in an alleyway, Melvin “rubs” it in an intimate manner and out pops a sprightly female genie (Chris Jordan) who grants him five wishes. Melvin’s wishes are to take the male roles in various hot sex scenes with his favorite adult actors and actresses. This is represented by such skin flick regulars as Harry Reems, Marc Stevens, Eric Edwards and plain Jane Tina Russell boffing away on a $1.98 harem set. All well and good, but these scenes are interrupted with Melvin’s mother barging her way in to join in the action! Paging Dr. Freud? All’s well that ends well.

As Joe Sarno and Doris Wishman scholar Michael Bowen points out in his interview included on this Vinegar Syndrome DVD and Blu-Ray combo, A Touch of Genie was Sarno’s second reluctant attempt at hardcore – and it shows it. Many cast and crew members hide behind pseudonyms and the actors doing the “comedic” scenes are kept separate from the actors getting to the nitty-gritty (with the exception of Ultramax and Russell, who appears briefly as a strait-laced virgin). Bowen also rightly points out that A Touch of Genie is self-reflexive on the porn genre in general, where those stuck in undeclared celibacy live vicariously through the actors on the Blue Screen.

August 15, 2017

Jane (Trish Van Devere) decides to chuck her job in the city to move to her late aunt’s isolated mansion in the country. Perhaps it wasn’t the best decision, as the townspeople are unexpectedly unfriendly and on top of everything else are as RUDE as FUCK. When they aren’t openly sneering at her at the country store, they pop up unexpectedly – without knocking the door or calling ahead or anything – right dab in her house! Jump scare. The reason for all the antipathy becomes obvious later on. It seems like her aunt was a devil worshiper who romantically took up with a black-clad no-goodnik and made the local area highly uncomfortable. According to local old soak Walter Pritchard (Joseph Cotton, who probably did a little too much research for this role) claims that Jane’s aunt, following her funeral was carried away in a hearse that spontaneously combusted – her aunt’s remains never found. Jane begins an affair with the vaporous, mysterious Tom Sullivan (David Gautreaux) who lacks a vampire cape to make his intentions even more obvious. Oh, yes, it’s called The Hearse – Jane has a bunch of nightmares involving a ghostly chauffeur (Dominic Barto) chasing her about in an old Packard, but it doesn’t really add up to much.

In the Eighties, when I made it my business to see every last horror movie on VHS, I never was in a rush to see The Hearse. Finally catching up to it now, thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, I can see why. It confirmed my suspicions that it was just a blatant rip-off of Dan Curtis’ Burnt Offerings (1976) that likewise had a ghostly chauffeur (Anthony James). The chauffeur in The Hearse, Barto, is bigger, beefier, but not the slightest bit scary. Whereas James creepy, grinning specter chilled spines, Barto imposes a physical menace but is as frightening as a second-string football player on a bender. Even worse, The Hearse skates around the devil worshipping angle with a few read-aloud diary entries but no tangible dread. While beautifully photographed by Mori Kawa, the film’s main setting is brightly lit and Country Corny. One hopes that Jane will stumble into a dark alcove full of pentagrams and occult kitsch – but no luck. Even the overly serious, overbearing The Blackcoats Daughter (2015) threw the audience a bone in this respect. The closest The Hearse gets to this is a mist-laden nightmare sequence in a funeral home that is over far too soon.

July 31, 2017

Scream Factory has had their hand in the Blu-ray debuts of many of the classic slashers from the 80's. One such film that they've recently unearthed for a High-Def makeover is from the one and only, King of the B's, Roger Corman. Throughout Roger Corman’s career (most notably in the 70s and 80s), the legendary cult film producer and director has taken a lot of unwarranted abuse by critics and film-goers for producing too many films that portray women as just objects, that are best seen either naked or getting killed. To me that’s a bunch of crap. Few producers have empowered the female gender like Roger Corman has. Sure they get naked, and yes plenty have perished at the hands of Carnosuars and driller killers, but some talented ladies have actually been employed to do more, like direct, write and produce. The director of the Slumber Party Massacre is is actually a talented woman by the name of Amy Jones. That's my evidence, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Gloria Steinem! Now onto the movie!

July 25, 2017

All righty, folks. On to the next DVD in the stack. Let’s see here. Brought to you by Chemical Burn Entertainment…

Oh, fuck my life.

This next little slice of excrement was written, directed, produced, edited, additionally photographed by one fucking guy, Samuel M. Johnson. I know nothing about him or what’s about to go down but being distributed by Chemical Burn is a HUGE strike against him/this movie.

Funded by Kickstarter…

Oh, Fuck My Life.

9 Days: Whipped, Chained, and Tortured by a Psychopath (I shit you not) is a unique (read: not at all) tale about Virgil who kidnaps and tortures young women to make them worthy of asking God for forgiveness. They must evolve beyond victim into the aggressor and then move on before they are complete. Inspired by Dante’s Inferno…

July 23, 2017

Kevin Moyers breaks down most of the movie and television trailers released at Comic-Con International in 2017 in this bonus episode. The trailers range from The Flash, Riverdale, and Star Trek: Discovery on the TV side to Justice League, Ready Player One, Jigsaw, and Infinity War on the movie side.

Click here to listen or right click and choose "Save Link As..." to download.